I Hate the Radio
On one side you got AOR and Top Forty pumping out the same songs it's been playing for the last thirty years. On the other side you got freaky hippie leftists playing obscure crap because if it is obscure it's got to be good, right?
Can't I just have people who know what is good music play the music they like. There is some of this on both sides, but it all goes back to what I was writing about before with the recognizing the artist and not the art. There are people who just have good taste. I know this sounds obvious, but if it is so obvious, why is there so much bad and or overplayed music being played?
I think there is fallacious idea going around, in the name of diversity, that the more people that do something the better off we are. In other words: it would always be a bad thing if a few people with truly good taste had most of the say in what music is heard by the public.
Now, you might say that I'm doing a good job at describing what Clear Channel is trying to do. But the fact that I hate Clear Channel should be clear to any reasonably intelligent person.
"The problem with our culture is that we don't know how to recognize genius," I said at party this past summer.
"What's your definition of genius?" my brother, very perceptively, asked.
I told him and the audience of my sister, her husband, and one of my sister's friend that I thought pretty much everyone had certain amount of genius, even if it's ditch digging genius. The problem is that some people get the idea that certain tasks are below them because of the status a culture places on certain jobs. Remember the "dot-com" boom of the 90's when everyone had have some kind of IT degree, because that was were the money, and more importantly the status, was?
When we lose the need to follow a divine mandate, we lose the ability to recognize our own genius and the genius of others.
Geez, all I wanted to say was how much I hated the radio and I spent the last hour dredging my brain for anything philosophical that I could fit into this particular subject.
Can't I just have people who know what is good music play the music they like. There is some of this on both sides, but it all goes back to what I was writing about before with the recognizing the artist and not the art. There are people who just have good taste. I know this sounds obvious, but if it is so obvious, why is there so much bad and or overplayed music being played?
I think there is fallacious idea going around, in the name of diversity, that the more people that do something the better off we are. In other words: it would always be a bad thing if a few people with truly good taste had most of the say in what music is heard by the public.
Now, you might say that I'm doing a good job at describing what Clear Channel is trying to do. But the fact that I hate Clear Channel should be clear to any reasonably intelligent person.
"The problem with our culture is that we don't know how to recognize genius," I said at party this past summer.
"What's your definition of genius?" my brother, very perceptively, asked.
I told him and the audience of my sister, her husband, and one of my sister's friend that I thought pretty much everyone had certain amount of genius, even if it's ditch digging genius. The problem is that some people get the idea that certain tasks are below them because of the status a culture places on certain jobs. Remember the "dot-com" boom of the 90's when everyone had have some kind of IT degree, because that was were the money, and more importantly the status, was?
When we lose the need to follow a divine mandate, we lose the ability to recognize our own genius and the genius of others.
Geez, all I wanted to say was how much I hated the radio and I spent the last hour dredging my brain for anything philosophical that I could fit into this particular subject.
posted by Geoff at 9:00 PM
2 Comments:
Radio? What's radio?
The Beast owns about 7 local stations hear in town (thanks to the wisdom of the Communications Act a few years back), and yes, not one of those channels has the integrity to play something beyond the scope of BTO or Britney. There are only so many times in a lifetime a person should have to hear, "You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet."
(On the philosophical side note: A few years back, Harvard sociologist Howard Gardner talked about 7 distinct kinds of intelligences. If you want an article on that: http://www.newhorizons.org/future/Creating_the_Future/crfut_gardner.html)
Back to the music... my related peeve to Clear Channel is the movement of so many churches to adopt the same "relevant" contemporary praise songs. I consider Vineyard/Hillsong/Maranatha to be the Clear Channel of Church music, forcing us into pep rallies, three-chord progressions and lyrics that would bore Toby Keith.
The solution has been, in my case, to embrace the world of the iPod and independent music. In recent months I've come across Christian-related bands like Over the Rhine, Pedro the Lion and Danielson Famile (and possibly Sufjan Stevens) that transcend the boundaries of Clear Channel and the V/H/M conglomerate. Beyond that, some more secular independent artists like The Arcade Fire, Of Montreal, and Noam Weinsten have both musical prowess and lyrical depth.
There is hope, but it is coming through the ether, not the airwaves.
Geof,
Your post about genius, diversity and multiple participants immediately evokes
Sturgeon's Law, which states: "Ninety percent of everything is crud". The problem is filtering, which is impossible if you want to have a life. You then have to trust people to do the filtering for you, be it book editors or music producers. The one way these filterers are recognized is when people vote with their money.
I just hope the most influent music producers that fling the ClearChannel crap toward us are actually hating this music and listening to classical each time they are alone. If they actually select it because they like it, civilization is in trouble.
The Internet is a great tool to create communities around music that is not recognized by the most influent producers.
--Fred
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